


Adiskide

by PoppyAlexander



Series: Road to Home [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Condoms, Cross-Generational Friendship, Crossover, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, Funny, Gen, Harm to Children, Kidnapping, Marriage, Murder, Post Reichenbach, Sad, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:24:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's fourth safe house is a flat in the Basque country (sounds lovely; it wasn't). John and Donna's first time is on the bedroom floor (a good idea you had; wasn't it?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adiskide

**Author's Note:**

> I reserve the "Explicit" rating for stories containing kink/non-con/triggers, and use the "Mature" rating for even graphic depictions of sex between consenting adults. This story contains sexually graphic language.
> 
> Parents and other sensitive types should bear in mind this story graphically depicts harm to a child.

The plaza outside the tiny flat into which Sherlock had recently been remanded was full of dancing giants. Ten feet tall, with giant wooden heads wearing frozen smiles and dead-eyed stares, they paraded in slow circles, feet dancing clumsily, hands now and again reaching to touch their chins, checking their balance. Every so often one left the formation, wandered into the crowds at the edge of the plaza; children hid behind the legs of parents forcing laughter and shushing them with uneasy reassurances that the _gigantes y cabezudos_ would not hurt them, they were funny, _chiste_ , see? A huge chef plodded along behind the Virgin Mary, who walked arm-in-arm with a scandalously racist, giant black-faced primitive. A small band of musicians on the pavement played mandolins, fiddles, drums, and pipes as the giants danced past.

Sherlock stepped out onto the tiny balcony and watched for a while. In the ever-moving crowd, there was one spot of stillness that caught his attention: a girl of about twelve, with small, close-set dark eyes and sandy hair tucked behind her ears. Dressed in a traditional costume of black waistcoat over white blouse, red dirndl skirt and knee-high white socks (for the festival and parade, Sherlock assumed, as he’d been in Donostia nearly three weeks and hadn’t seen folk dress even once; now the plaza was lousy with it), the girl stood stock-still on the sidewalk, arms at her sides, flicking her fingers in a nervous, compulsive way. She stared at him.

Sherlock stared back for a few seconds, raised one hand to chest level and gave a small wave. As if shocked, the girl quite suddenly pivoted on her heel and darted up the street, disappearing into a nondescript door beside a cheese shop. Sherlock watched the festivities for several minutes more, a welcome change of scenery. Once the bulk of the parade had moved down the road, the crowds began to thin, and people returned to the usual business of visiting shops, greeting neighbors, hurrying their lagging children.

Just before he turned to go back inside, Sherlock noticed the same little girl once again standing in the same spot. She was holding a book open in front of her, at waist height, and kept looking from the pages up to Sherlock, then back down at the book. Behaviour that would have been utterly terrifying in an adult--given Sherlock’s position as resident of his fourth safe house since faking his death a year earlier--was, in a child, merely curious, so he continued to watch her watching him. Sherlock couldn’t make out what her book was from across the street, but it had a strange, unbalanced quality. He figured it for a scrapbook or journal of some sort, rather than a mass-produced book. After several long looks at his face and at the pages of the book, the girl snapped it shut, tucked it rather awkwardly under one arm, and strode determinedly across the road toward him.

*

Donna was trying to remember if her knickers matched her bra.

She’d been able to put off John for a bit—lied that “the painters and decorators were in” on their wedding night and for the next few days; then feigned exhaustion for two more nights--even pretending to fall asleep on the sofa watching _The X Factor_ despite the fact she was dying to know who was getting the boot that week-- when they’d spent the weekend moving in her things from her mum’s house. But she couldn’t hold out forever. They were married, after all. And what was she afraid of, anyway? John was grand, her best mate. She trusted him. When it came down to it, Donna probably knew him better than she’d known most of the men she’d gone to bed with.

But that was precisely the problem. They were like an old married couple, and they’d only just gotten married. How could you gracefully go backward from three years into a friendship, and jump into the part that was supposed to come at the beginning—all the wondering, wanting, fumbling, figuring it all out. . . The two of them were comfortable as a pair of old shoes, and now they were going to try to be passionate? She’d do her part (hence, trying to remember what she’d put on under her clothes that morning, and whether it was fit to be seen), but the weird stress of the whole scenario was like to kill her.

“More wine?” John called from the kitchen.

“Absolutely, yes!” Donna replied, perhaps too emphatically. “Lovely,” she added, more quietly. While his back was turned, she reached under her skirt, shimmied out of her knickers, and stuffed them under the sofa cushion, eliminating the issue of whether her lingerie matched. It had the added benefit of making her feel a bit naughty, which immediately made her feel stupid and self-conscious. There wasn’t enough wine in the world.

John brought the wine, settled on the couch beside Donna.

“What’s our crap-telly treat for this evening?” he asked.

“No, nothing,” Donna replied. “I thought you might want to. . .” she shrugged, darted her eyes back and forth as she took a long slug of wine then finished, “I don’t know--have a cuddle?”

John smiled. “A cuddle? Shall I fetch my teddy bear?”

Donna, feeling edge-of-ridiculous, nonetheless forced herself to blurt out, “A shag, then!” Another healthy gulp of wine. How long would it take to get past jittery-teenager and sink into warm-puddle-of-gentle-drunkenness?

John raised his eyebrows, put on a pantomime of shock at the suggestion.

“We’re married,” Donna protested, “It’s allowed!”

“It’s _expected_ ,” John agreed. “I just didn’t know you were inclined that way.”

“Well, of course I am. Did you think we were going to have a sexless marriage?”

“I wondered if we might.”

Donna mugged. “What, really?”

John shrugged.

Donna shook her head emphatically. “No,” she told him. She had drained most of her glass by now.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled the offer’s on the table,” John told her. “You seem jumpy.”

“It’s just strange.  It’s. . .not what we do.” John took her now-empty glass and moved to the kitchen to pour more. “Bring the bottle,” Donna suggested. John did as he was told, handing her the glass and setting the bottle on the coffee table.

“You’re right, it’s a bit strange,” John agreed. “Before the registry office when he said, ‘you may kiss your bride,’ we’d only ever kissed, what, four times?”

“Five.”

John looked thoughtful. “You laid a fairly serious one on me at the end of our first date—when you gave me your little one-that-got-away-speech,” he said, ticking it off on one finger. Then he ticked off another. “Mistletoe at Ben Harmon’s Christmas drinks. And two New Year’s Eves.” He held up four fingers.

“The first anniversary of your Sherlock’s funeral,” she reminded him.

“What?” he looked slightly chagrined. “I decided to get drunk. . .after that, I don’t recall much.”

“Oh, you got drunk all right,” Donna told him. “That Molly from the morgue called and got me out of my bed at eleven that night because you were staggering around in the road outside St. Bart’s, and hospital security were threatening to call the police.”

“That bit sounds vaguely familiar, now you mention it.” John looked truly embarrassed.

“Brought you back here in a taxi, and you gave me a sloppy kiss while I was tucking you into bed. Grabbed my tits, as well.”

“Did I? Well that’s mortifying. I apologize.”

Donna, at last beginning to feel her edges soften, waved her hand dismissively. “Forget it. I was in a bit of a slump, and aside from your whiskey breath it was the best kiss I’d had in a while.”

“Really, though, can you blame a man wanting to get a feel of those?” he asked, smiling, jutting his chin toward her bust. “I’m surprised you don’t get more of that, to be honest.”

Donna felt her cheeks get hot. “What are you on about?”

John nodded. “Magnificent.”

“You masher.”

“It’s one of the first things I noticed about you, that astonishing bosom.”

“Stop now!” Donna smacked his arm with the back of her hand. “But, while we’re on the subject, you’re not so bad yourself, Big Boy.”

John sipped his wine, looked knowing. “You’ll see.”

Donna laughed, half in relief. They were flirting; this was progress. Maybe she’d been overanalyzing things, worried herself into a state, all for nothing.

“I’ll see what, now?”

“’Big Boy,’ you said.”

“John. Watson.” Donna played scandalized.

“That’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

“Sure it’s not.”

“Well, no. I’ll also add in my favour that I’m just generally very good.” John was doing that half-serious, self-deprecating thing which Donna always found charming and hilarious.

“That so?” she asked pointedly. She slipped out of her sandals and stretched her legs so her feet were resting on the sofa beside John’s thigh.

“Absolutely, it’s so. You should see my online reviews. Five stars, across the board.”

Donna let out an enormous laugh, which drew a warm smile from John. He set his wine glass on the side table and lifted Donna’s ankles in his hands, resting her feet in his lap. He began to massage the instep of one foot and Donna let her eyes close for a moment.

“Oh, you make me laugh,” Donna exhaled.

“I love your laugh,” John replied.

God, he sounded so serious. Donna’s nerves returned. She pulled her feet back off his lap. “Sweetheart, I love you madly, but I don’t mind telling you I’m nervous as a teenager.”

“Aw, you’re all right,” John said quietly, smiling. “Come over here and give us a cuddle.”

*

There was knocking—persistent, rhythmic—on the middle third of the door, first two knuckles only. Sherlock closed and locked the door to the balcony, pulled shut the curtains. The disposable mobile phone he’d been given lay on the counter separating the living area from the kitchenette; he quickly entered the panic number, did not hit “Call,” pocketed it.

“You are in? _¡Señor! ¿Está en casa?”_ came the voice from the other side of the door, the knuckles still rapping. _“¡Señor!_ You are in?” Young. Female. Heavily accented English. Strangely accented Spanish. A Basque girl—the one he’d just been looking at outside. Easy enough for her to figure out which door to knock on, having seen him from the balcony.

The knocking stopped. Sherlock moved to the door. As he leaned in toward the peephole, there was a soft scraping sound at his feet; he looked down to find a piece of thick, cream-coloured paper with hasty hand-printed words on it. He picked it up, read it as he rose to stand.

“I know what you are called Sherlock Holmes. I say to nobody.”

Sherlock peered through the peephole. It was, indeed, the young girl from before, looking back and forth down the hallway, her book tucked under her arm. She started to knock again.

Sherlock unfastened the chain, turned the bolt, opened the door.

“Come in, come in,” he urged quietly, recklessly. The girl stepped just inside the door, and Sherlock shut and locked it again. Sherlock waved the paper at her. “How do you know that name?” he demanded.

The girl looked at the collar of his shirt as she replied in tortured English, “I follow in. . .internet.” She thrust the book toward him. “I say English not so good like Spanish,” she added, semi-apologetically.

 _“¿Qué es esto?”_ Sherlock took the book from her, opened it randomly and began to flip through it. Inside it were printouts from his website, John’s blog, British tabloid newspapers, all printed onto plain white paper, cut out, and glued into the scrapbook. “Why would you print these out?” Sherlock asked her in Spanish, “Could you not just look at it on the computer?”

“I dislike to read on the computer,” she replied; her Spanish was spoken in an awkward rhythm and with jumbled grammar, but was better than her English. “The light hurts my eyes.”

Sherlock narrowed his gaze at her.

“Is there something wrong with your eyes?” he asked. “You haven’t looked at my face.”

“A lot of things are too bright, but I am told that my eyes are normal. I already saw your face, from across the street,” she half-explained.

Some sort of Autism Spectrum disorder, Sherlock concluded, with sensory integration problems. He glanced again at the book.

“You followed John Watson’s blog?” he asked. “Read about the cases?”

The girl stood flicking her fingers, looking at Sherlock’s wrist, his hairline.

“I think you see things others do not see.”

Sherlock turned another page, found a photo of John, skimmed his fingertips over it.

Sherlock vaguely wondered at the fact the girl had picked him out, given that he was in semi-disguise: hair cut short and the grayish light brown of mouse fur; brown contact lenses; cheap clothes like a bloody Scandinavian tourist. . .he still startled when he caught a sideways glance at himself in a mirror.

“But how could I be Sherlock Holmes?” he demanded. “It says right here in your book that Sherlock Holmes is dead. He jumped from the roof of a hospital.” He stared hard at the girl. For only as long as it took her to speak, her eyes met his.

“Who saw?” she challenged, then looked immediately down at the floor.

Sherlock’s interest was piqued. He turned to a page with a black-and-white printout of the hospital, the section of roof where Sherlock had stood talking to John on his mobile phone just before he jumped. Sherlock turned the book around and showed the photo to the girl.

“I see eleven things in this photograph that most people wouldn’t,” he told her nonchalantly.

She glanced at the photo just long enough to verify which it was, then looked up toward the ceiling as she rattled off, “Lorry traveling West; cobblestone; cloudless sky; phone box door open; white rectangle marking on the pavement; ‘M’ was replaced; bird’s nest; second ledge; burnt-out lightbulb; bench leg cracked; windows recently cleaned on second storey but not third, first, or ground.”

Sherlock snapped the book shut, grinning broadly. “ _¿Como te llamas?”_

“ I am called Mirari Bolibar. What are you called?”

Sherlock handed her back the book. “You know.”

“Sairlock Hol-mess.”

“Indeed.”

*

Donna snuggled up to John, her legs across his lap. He brushed a lock of hair away from her face, stroked her cheek as he went. Donna let out a nervous giggle.

“Why are you laughing?” John asked, through a laugh of his own.

“I don’t know!” Donna blushed, didn’t know where to put her hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Close your eyes,” John commanded.

“Why should—?“

“Donna.”

She did as she was told.

“You’re holding your breath,” he said. He stroked the back of her hand; her wrist; her forearm. Donna exhaled, made a conscious effort to soften her shoulders.

John’s hand slid quickly up the length of her arm, and his fingers were in her hair, stroking down its length. And again. It was soothing; Donna sighed out a humming breath. When she spoke, her voice was lower, softer.

“Can I open my eyes now?”

“Not just yet.  Hush.”

John’s fingers were under her chin, raising it, and she let him turn her face a bit. And then his lips pressed against hers--just for a second--and when he drew back, she could still sense him there, his face close to hers, his breath on her upper lip. Donna moistened her lips, parted them.

“All right?” John asked quietly, and there was something in his voice that positively melted her.

“Yeh,” she whispered, and her hand found the back of his neck, fingertips stroking his close-shorn hair. “C’mere, you.”

He kissed her again, a proper kiss, tips of their tongues finding each other, retreating, sliding together again. Donna couldn’t remember the last time she’d been kissed; she felt something like relief. She smiled against John’s mouth.

“Anyway, this bit’s quite good,” she told him.

“Good.”

“Where’s your hand, by the way?” she asked slyly, directing her gaze down toward her lap, where John’s hand had disappeared under the hem of her skirt.

“Oh, my hand.” he joked. “I think it’s working its way toward your knickers?”

Donna, feeling reckless from the wine (or at least giving herself permission to feel reckless, with wine as the excuse), leaned in close to John, brushing her cheek against his, nuzzling up next to his ear where she whispered, “Joke’s on you, then, Big Boy. I ain’t wearing any knickers.”

John closed his eyes, pumped his fist a little. “That’s me winning,” he said. “A beautiful girl not only said she wants to shag me, but also forgot her knickers? It’s too good to be true.”

Donna laughed. She grabbed his wrist and guided his hand up her thigh, sought his mouth for another, deeper kiss. Ah, there it was—a familiar shock of heat starting low in her belly, her breath coming harder, the longing—how had she gone so long and not felt this with someone? Donna let her hand trace along John’s forearm (lovely, strong forearms she’d noticed way back on their first date), then landed on his wrist again, urging upwards.

John broke their kiss with a cheeky grin. “What’re you up to, Missus?”

“You know,” Donna replied, looking at him through half-closed eyes.

“I’m still stuck back at the no-knickers thing.”

“Are we finished necking on the couch like a couple of teenagers?” Donna asked, giddy that he’d called her beautiful, warm all over from the wine and the kissing and John’s hand on her thigh.

“Hmmm. . .not quite.” John cast a meaningful glance at her cleavage.

“It’s mostly smoke and mirrors, I’m afraid,” Donna admitted. “But you can have a go, if you like.”

“Yes, please,” John exhaled. They shifted their positions on the sofa a bit, and Donna slipped her fingertips under the straps of her tank-top, shimmied them down her shoulders until her arms were free. She pulled down the top to reveal a satiny, aubergine-coloured bra that pushed her breasts up and together in a way that bordered on incredible; Donna was a firm believer that a good bra was the best investment a woman could make, and she liked a little va-va-voom. The bit with sliding her top down served the dual purpose of showing off her assets for John while still keeping her tummy covered.

John’s eyes were like saucers. Donna cupped her breasts in her hands, gave them a little bounce.

“Whatcha think?” she asked, with a wicked grin.

“I can’t think,” John said. “I’m stunned.”

Donna reached behind her back, unfastened the bra, let it fall.

John shook his head, looked up to heaven momentarily. “Even more magnificent!” he enthused. “How is it possible?”

“Oh, stop,” Donna chided. She dropped the bra off to the side and reached for John. They kissed deeply, John caressing and teasing Donna’s breasts with his fingertips, making her nipples harden. She found the hem of his t-shirt, slid her hands under and up along the sides of his torso. When they came up for air, Donna asked quietly, “John, are you holding in your stomach?”

John laughed at himself. “A bit, yeah.”

“Oh, god, me, too!” Donna exclaimed.

“Let’s not.”

“No.”

They were laughing as they resumed their embrace, but were soon sighing, kissing, exploring--taking stock of each other’s reactions to being touched, teased, tickled, caressed. It really was a bit like teenagers necking on the sofa, Donna thought distantly, but not in a bad way. Really, it was quite good fun.

*

The girl, Mirari, began to come around a few afternoons a week. Her grandmother owned the cheese shop; they lived in the flat above. Mirari said her mother was a drug addict and she didn’t know her father. She was thirteen years old, with a round face and tiny mouth, and she favoured soft, comfortable clothing without buttons or thick seams that she could feel every second they were on her. She went to regular school in the morning and split her afternoons between advanced maths and social-skills courses she thought were specifically designed to torture her. She had memorized long passages from John’s blog and quoted from it when asking Sherlock questions about the cases summarized therein.

Sherlock and Mirari turned the sofa toward the glass door and windows that faced the little balcony and stood on its cushions, peering through binoculars to watch passersby and noting what they could discern about them based on their clothing, things they carried, the speed at which they walked, or their posture. Mirari wrote endless notations in her book—using the blank pages at the back for their discussions of the townsfolk, and adding information to the printouts she’d glued in based on what Sherlock told her about the cases she already knew so well.

During each visit, Sherlock made them small cups of strong coffee—he was impressed that she didn’t add milk—and she sat on the threadbare, lumpy sofa in the living room while Sherlock told her about his other cases, ones he’d solved before John started blogging about him. In the telling, he would include useless (or, occasionally, fabricated) details, and leave out key information, which Mirari would then sooner or later ask the correct questions to elicit from him. He would narrate a case for her at the end of their visit, and the next time she came, she would present him with her idea as to its resolution. The questions Mirari asked were spot-on, drawing out exactly what she needed to reach the correct conclusions. She usually identified the false clues, sometimes on the spot, and over the course of several weeks, Sherlock shared over a dozen cases with her. She solved every one of them correctly.

“You have a good mind,” he told her one afternoon, when they’d been meeting for about a month. “A very good mind.”

“The teachers in school, and my grandmother, and the doctor say all of them that my mind works wrong. They are trying always to change me. ‘Look in my eye. Look in my eye. Say: it happies me to meet you.’ My grandmother hates my book. She tried to put it in this garbage, three times.” Mirari was agitated, flicking her fingers, looking at the ceiling.

Sherlock nodded. “They want to make you understand them, but they don’t make an effort to understand you.”

“Yes, Sairlock, this is so!” Mirari agreed, nodding vigorously. “And I am so easy to understand! I like my type of clothes. I like mathematics. I see all this things that other people do not see, and fix the puzzles.”

“Solve the puzzles,” Sherlock corrected, but gently.

“Yes, solve these puzzles. They want me to understand how their faces arrange to tell me a hundred things—this eyebrows up, surprised. This eyebrows down, angry. This teeth showing—“ She bared her teeth, wolflike, “It happies them to meet me.” Her fingertips brushed up and down rhythmically on the cover of her scrapbook, draining energy. “And their voice goes up, down, loud, quiet—and they say words they do not mean it, but they do not say, ‘I do not mean it.’ It gives me so tired to try sorting this all out.”

Sherlock hummed in agreement. “Feelings are a problem, when yours are so different to other peoples’. But it can be useful to learn, so learn as much as you can. In time you’ll discover which things you’ve learned are useful to keep, and which you can discard. Trust your mind, always.”

Mirari looked pleased with this idea. She opened her book, picked up her pen.

“This blonde woman with the spots on her skin—what job did she have?”

It was an excellent question, the perfect question. Sherlock smiled.

*

Eventually John and Donna made their way to the bedroom (Donna made sure the light was off, though there was still some light from the hallway coming in). John sat on the edge of the bed, peeling off his socks. Donna reached for the zip on her skirt.

“Oh, no you don’t, Missus,” John said, reaching out and grabbing her by the hip. He pulled her toward him, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he nuzzled his face against her breasts, licking, nipping with his teeth. He slid one hand under the hem of her skirt, ran his hand up the inside of her thigh. “I like the peek-a-boo aspect of this whole business,” he said to her cleavage, pressing on her hip to guide her around onto the mattress.

Donna lay back on the bed, grinning all the while. “What are you up to, Doctor Watson?” she demanded playfully. John moved to kneel beside the bed, between her dangling legs. He slid his hands up over her knees, urging them apart, nudging the hem of her skirt upward with his chin and nose.

“Sweetheart, your leg,” Donna protested, wondering if he wasn’t uncomfortable kneeling on the floor.

“Let me worry about that,” he said. “Relax. We’re having fun.”

Donna inhaled, exhaled her nerves in a great gust. “Sorry, sorry,” she muttered.

John nuzzled his nose and lips along the inside of her thigh, guided her foot onto his shoulder. She giggled.

“I don’t know why I’m so silly,” Donna said to the ceiling, feeling self-conscious, unable to relax.

John hummed noncommittally, the palms of his hands gliding up the insides of her thighs, pressing them apart. “You’re going to stop talking now,” he told her, his head completely beneath her skirt, and Donna could hear the smirk in his voice.

“How d’you know I’m going to—Ahh!” John’s clever fingers had gently, swiftly, parted her lips, and his tongue stroked her clit in the most remarkable way. Donna let out a long, low purr, her eyes falling closed. All her nerves melted and flowed as heat to her center, concentrating an exquisite tension just beneath John’s mouth. Donna forgot she was nervous, forgot she wasn’t drunk enough, forgot they were old shoes. . .god, he was a genius.

John withdrew, teasing, just long enough for Donna to let out a mew of dismay then resumed his ministrations, his tongue sliding up and around the inside of her lips, then returning to her clit, stroking soft and hot against her. The concentrated heat and tension flared outward through her in a jolt, making Donna’s thighs shake, making her gasp. John hummed encouragement against her and she caught her breath sharply, one hand stroking the back of John’s head, pulling him to her, urging him on. He complied readily, now licking her clit with long, slow strokes, each ending with a pause that nearly drove her mad before he started the next. John slid his arms under her hips, lifting her to him. He made another noise, as if she were just the _most_ delicious thing, his tongue slipping between her lips, tasting her all over, back to her clit with quick, soft strokes.

Donna whined in blissful frustration; it was too much, too lovely, she pulled his head toward her, her hips rocking against his mouth, and he let out a heavy moan against her, his fingertips digging into the flesh of her hips. Donna pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth, bit down, and let out a series of sharp, gulping breaths and hiccupping little yelps as she came.

John drew back, slipped his arms from around her hips, and Donna felt the stubble of his cheek against her inner thigh as she quieted, hips still rolling, breath heaving.

“More?” John asked quietly, and it wasn’t as if he was asking if she wanted more, but if she would let him have more. Donna nodded at the darkness.

“Mmm. . .”she moaned, granting permission, begging, both at once.

And there were his fingers again, exploring her, parting the tender folds so he could dip in his tongue, his fingers slipping down to her opening, luxuriating in her wetness. He pressed her legs back until both her feet rested on his shoulders and she worried vaguely she might hurt his shoulder until he slipped his fingers inside her while the tip of his tongue moved to circle her clit, which soon had her moaning in a high, urgent tone, pinching her nipples hard as the waves of another orgasm rolled through her.

John backed off slowly, kissing the crease of her hip, the inside of her thigh, maneuvering her feet away from his neck as he made to get up from the floor. Donna caught her breath.

John grunted a bit as he rose to stand, bracing himself on the bed. He side-stepped.

“Ow! Damn! Ow!” He was falling, twisting quickly to fall onto the bed beside Donna. He landed less than halfway on, though, and kept on going, until he hit the floor with a heavy thump.

Donna scrambled to her knees on the bed, looked over the edge at John, lying on his side, clutching his thigh, frantically digging his knuckles into the flesh just above his knee.

“God, Sweetheart, are you all right?!” Donna leaned over toward the side table, clicked on the lamp. John squinted, turned his head. His face was utterly contorted in a grimace of pain.

“No, don’t turn the bloody light on, as if I’m not humiliated enough in the dim.”

“Sorry!” Donna clicked it off again. “What’s happened?”

“Cramp!” He rolled back and forth, digging his fist into his muscle, groaning.

“What can I do?” Donna asked.

“Step on it.”

“Do what?”

John motioned frantically for her to move off the bed; Donna stepped over him and stood between his body and the wall, her knuckles pressed to her lips, her forehead wrinkled with concern. He grabbed her ankle and Donna braced herself with one hand against the wall as he lifted her foot and guided her heel to a spot on his outer thigh.

“Step on it!” he demanded through clenched teeth and Donna did as she was told, leaning her weight onto her heel. John’s hand on her ankle urged her to turn her foot this way and that; she ground her heel into his leg.

John let out a shout like she was murdering him.

“I’m sorry!” Donna started to move away.

“No!” John protested. “More!”

She ground her foot down onto his thigh again, could feel the muscle like a taut cable beneath his skin, resisted a rush of queasiness--anatomy and guts and that--it all made her a bit light-headed. John slowly forced his leg straight, and Donna could feel the cable of his muscle slacken. He gently moved her foot away and finished massaging out the cramp with his fingertips.

“Can you get up?” Donna asked, proffering her hand to him.

“Not just yet.”

She tried to kneel beside him, but there wasn’t room. In the end, she hiked her skirt up above her knees (why was she still wearing it? She must look silly with the skirt pulled up and her top still bunched around her waist), and knelt across his middle, one knee on either side of him. She lay her hand on his cheek.

“Poor you,” she cooed. “Feeling better?”

He’d finished rubbing the cramp away and his hand came up to cover his eyes.

“Only my pride hurt. Yeah. That was ridiculous.”

“Oh, no, nevermind.  Happens to the best of us.”

“No, it was utterly, completely ludicrous and I am about to die of shame and so will say my farewell. You’ve been a lovely friend these few years, a wonderful wife all week, and that bit just now on the bed will carry me in good stead to my final rest.”

Donna laughed, wriggled a bit until she felt the rough fabric of his trousers’ fly against her.

“Surely you’re not going to die _right_ away,” she protested, reaching to remove his hand from his eyes.

“I am,” he told her, though he let her move his hand onto her thigh beneath her skirt. “I’ll be dead in minutes from pure humiliation.”

“No life left in you at all?” she asked slyly, rolling her hips atop him.

“Wait, I think I sense. . .something. . .“

“Don’t go toward the light,” she told him. She could feel him hardening beneath her.

“God, it’s just—“ his hands stroked up and down her thighs, his fingertips raising goose pimples on her skin, “It’s the most glorious, gorgeous sight I’ve ever seen.”

Donna licked her lips in what she hoped was a seductive manner, ran her own hands over and under her breasts, hefting them momentarily, then drawing circles around her nipples with her index fingers until they tightened into hard beads.

“Somehow it just got even better,” John said, his voice a husky whisper. He gripped her hips and shifted them, his pelvis rising up to meet her.

Donna went to work on John’s belt buckle, the button and zip on his trousers. John’s eyes closed and he sighed. Donna leaned forward along his torso and he eagerly caressed her breasts with warm-fingered hands, sucked her nipple into his mouth, used his clever tongue on it so Donna shivered. Meantime, she reached down between her own legs, into John’s trousers and the waistband of his boxers (there was one burning question answered).

“Ooh!” Donna exclaimed softly, as her hand found and encircled John’s erection. “Big boy, indeed.”

John hummed a small, knowing laugh that melted into a moan as Donna began stroking him. His cock was thick and wonderfully hot in her hand. She knelt above him again, stopped what she was doing just long enough to shift his trousers down, then wrapped her fingers around him again, relishing the way he caught his breath at her touch.

John reached above his head, fumbled around a bit, finally got the drawer of the bedside table open and felt around inside it until he withdrew a foil packet and tore it open.

“Allow me,” Donna breathed, taking it from him. John reached down between them and offered his upturned palm, fingers curled slightly upward.  Donna gratefully took advantage, nearly forgetting about the condom as she wriggled against his hand; each time John’s fingers slid against her clit she let out a little grunting breath.

With a knowing smile, Donna unrolled the condom onto John’s cock, stroking it smooth with both hands. John rested his hands at her waist as Donna walked her knees forward a bit, grasped his cock in her hand, raised herself up. They both groaned as she slid down upon him, paused, caught her breath, and then began to move against him, bracing herself with her palms on his biceps.

John guided Donna’s hips with his hands, slowly at first, but soon enough he was bouncing her on his cock, making her tits swing and jump; Donna caught her breath, gasping, with each thrust. John encouraged her softly, yes, that’s lovely, yes, yes. . .

There was a distant rapping sound, Mrs Hudson knocking on the wall at the foot of the stairs. “Hoo-hoo!”

“Oh, for Jesus’ sake,” John moaned. Donna looked stricken, stopped moving for a second until John’s hands urged her on.

“Everything all right up there, Watsons?” she called, “There was a terrible thud. Was John shouting?”

Donna, grinding against John so that she was on the verge of orgasm again, swallowed hard; her throat was dry.

“We’re fine, Mrs Hudson!” she called, her voice cracking strangely near the end as John licked the ball of his thumb and pressed it to her clit while she rode him. “Thanks! Nevermind!” Then, quieter, to John, “She’s going to come up here.”

“Didn’t we already talk about how we’re married, and this behavior is expected?” he panted.

“We should stop.”

John withdrew his hand, stilled his movements beneath her. “You want to stop?” he challenged.

Donna grabbed his wrist, guided his hand back between her legs. “God, no. Who told you that?” They began to rock against each other again.

“Sounded like one of you fell.” Mrs Hudson again. Was her voice coming closer? Donna couldn’t tell. At least the bedroom light was out; she’d get only half an eyeful. Well, the light, and the fact they were behind the bed on the floor. She’d only see Donna’s tits out, then. She could fill in the rest, surely.

“Just moving furniture,” John shouted. To Donna, “You’d better hurry and finish.” A sly smile, a cunning movement with his thumb. Donna gasped, shuddered. Loudly again, “A chair fell over.”

Donna breathed, “You hurry up your—“ she caught her breath, shifted her hips, started to come—“Yourself. Oh!” She pursed her lips, listening for Mrs Hudson’s tread on the stairs, but couldn’t hold back the waves that began to roll through her. Donna’s voice rose and rose, though she tried to keep her mouth shut, and she rocked against John’s cock while she came. She felt him swell inside her, let her head loll sideways on her neck, heard John’s breathing change. As her orgasm subsided, Donna slid up and down on his cock with renewed vigor; his fingers dug into the flesh of her thighs. John bit down on a shout as he came. Donna pressed her finger against his lips to remind him to be quiet.

“Well, all right then. I’m to bed,” Mrs Hudson called. “Good night, Watsons.”

Donna collapsed onto John’s chest, buried her face in his neck, laughing at how close they’d come to being caught. The whole evening had been so much like when she was a kid, scrambling to straighten her school uniform when she heard her mother’s key in the door. It was great fun.

“Blimey, that was a near miss,” John said.

“We’ve got to get in the habit of locking those doors,” Donna agreed. “Now that we’re married, and this sort of behavior is expected.” She lifted her head to look at John’s face in the shadows. He was grinning. He lifted his head off the floor, kissed her.

“Haven’t done that on the floor since I was a much younger man,” he told her. Donna started to maneuver herself up off him, getting to her feet. She stepped over him, sat on the edge of the bed. John moved to rearrange his trousers, started to roll himself over. “Right,” he said, flopping onto his back once more. “I’m just going to have to live here now. Have my mail forwarded, would you?”

Donna pressed a hand behind his shoulder, grasped his hand, helped get him up to sitting.

“You can’t pull that wounded warrior bit with me, mate,” she told him. “Not after we’ve been moving all this furniture around.”

John made his way up to sit beside her on the bed. Donna slipped her arms through the straps of her cami-top, pulled it up over her breasts. She smoothed her skirt down across her thighs. John took her hand, held it.

“That was a good idea you had,” John said with a smile.

“It was, wasn’t it?”

They called out sick from work the next two days and spent a long weekend together in the flat, mostly in bed—though also in the bath, and twice in the living room (with the doors locked). Ever after, they referred to those few days lazing in bed at the Baker Street flat--eating takeaways and watching crap telly between rounds--as their honeymoon.

*

Sherlock had spent the better part of the morning sketching an elaborate map of the grounds and home of a wealthy Belgian art collector. Mirari arrived at her usual time, dropped her schoolbooks on the battered sofa, took off her shoes, loosened her neckerchief and unbuttoned the collar of her blouse—untrussing herself after a day bound up in the clothes she hated, seams and fasteners and little bumpy bits driving her to distraction, it was no wonder she forgot to bare her teeth at the social-skills teachers and tell them it happied her to meet them.

“This case you told me yesterday,” she said, once they had waved hello—the ritual they had decided to use in place of the usual cheek-kisses, which Sherlock didn’t mind but which made Mirari feel crowded—“the banker stolen by these kidnappers. Did he only _pretend_ this because his wife knew of his mistress and he was try to avoid a divorce from her?”

Sherlock wanted to kiss her cheeks then, he was so pleased, but he settled for another gesture they had agreed on instead. He picked up the violin They’d given him—cheap, unprofessional, but serviceable and better than nothing—to play her a jolly little jingle celebrating another correct solution.

“Excellent work!” he told her. He spread out his map on the small, round dining table and Mirari slid into her usual chair, repeatedly patting the lengths of her fingers against each other in an almost-clap. “Art thieves,” Sherlock told her. “Two contemporary paintings cut from their frames; a headless, crucified fashion doll suspended upside-down in a Perspex box; and an abstract sculpture weighing nearly half a ton. All disappeared on a single night between 11:45pm when the overnight security patrol began sweeping the grounds, and 5:50am when the man of the house arose for his morning swim.” He pointed to the locations of each item as he described them. “No broken glass, no forced entry of any kind. Alarms set and intact; armed guards present and accounted for.”

Mirari narrowed her eyes at the map, began tracing each and every line Sherlock had drawn with one fingertip, staring at the upper left corner and moving clockwise over the entire page.

“Why you have included the locations of these windows? If the thieves came in the night, this drapery was of course closed.”

“Very well observed,” Sherlock told her. “In daylight the direction of the sun through these west-facing windows may have told us something, but at night, they are irrelevant.”

She had nearly finished tracing the map with her finger. “There are more clues you have not told me.”

“Indeed,” Sherlock grinned. “The first is, ‘laundry.’”

Mirari doubled back with her fingertip, finding the kitchen, with a notation for a stairwell to a cellar.

“The second is, ‘Israel,’” Sherlock told her. He moved to the kitchenette to brew the coffee, smiling to himself with a mixture of amusement and pride. It pleased him to give his young friend a challenge she so immediately went after. As always, she asked good questions, and spotted his false clues.

Mirari’s pen hovered above an empty page in her scrapbook. In Sherlock’s peripheral vision, he noticed she had turned her gaze away from the book and the map, and that she was looking at him as he fetched the coffee cups, measured the grounds, boiled the water. He resisted the urge to look back at her, to smile, for he knew it would spook her, crowd her, make her look away.

She asked suddenly, “Why did your friend Doctor John Watson stop to writing his blog?”

Sherlock, caught utterly off-guard, froze momentarily, resting the sides of balled fists on the countertop in front of him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes for longer than a blink.

“I suppose--” he ventured at last, conscious to smooth his voice, for although Mirari was not particularly attuned to many nuances of communication, she had occasionally asked him why his voice sounded “squeezed,” (as he picked his way around phrases or topics not particularly suitable for a grown man to be discussing with a teenage girl), or why it sounded, “craggy,” (the lump in his throat when he talked about John). “I suppose when there were no more cases to write about, perhaps he thought the blog was no longer necessary.”

“I wonder what he is doing now, after he thinks you have died. He wrote very much about his memories with you, very positive things about your mind, and how he admired it. For three or four times he wrote this kind of things.”

Sherlock was back to fiddling with coffee spoons, though most of his movements were unnecessary. Of course he had read the blog (through an intelligence-agency web-portal which left no trace of him—no “hit” on the counter, no IP address to be looked up, nothing to “ping”). John had eulogized him, then over the next few weeks, written a few short entries with little anecdotes he’d remembered, and once a drunken rant about the press, the police, and the fact that the chip-van up the road had doubled all their prices, which started full of piss and vinegar and ended with a howl and a moan, John’s grief screaming out from beneath every word.

After each of these posts, John had exchanged long strings of comments with his readers, who offered him condolences and conspiracy theories, in a few cases scorn (always— _always_ —there was a troll), and in one case, promises of oral sex sufficient to heal his broken heart, or at least erase his memory. In the end, John had thanked readers for their loyalty and kindness, begged their indulgence for what he called his “High Mope and Rending of Garments,” and said he was going to step away from the blog for a while, perhaps a long while, until he had something of substance to share.

Sherlock noticed the long gap in conversation. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mirari was still studying him. “John was a good friend to me,” was all he could think to say. He poured the steaming, mahogany-brown coffee into the little cups and started toward the dining table.

“I would have read more Doctor John Watson’s blog, I think, even without this summarizes of the cases.”

“Summaries of the cases,” Sherlock corrected, quietly, as he set down a cup of coffee on the corner of the hand-drawn map of the art collector’s home. Mirari moved the cup off the paper, to a spot on the table which seemed very precise, but the significance of which Sherlock could not determine. She spun the cup by its handle until she was satisfied it was correctly placed, and only then picked it up, blew across the steam, and took a sip. “What do you think he would write, then, without me?” Sherlock wondered, pacing slowly up and down the length of the living room.

Mirari tapped her pen against her lower lip, looked back at the map.

“He might have been writing then about his alone life. Once he wrote that he would to become a doctor again, but I am not sure if he did this or did not. He said he was too much drinking alcohol, and he was forgotten how to sleep.”

Sherlock had, for a few months, forgotten what little he knew about how to sleep, as well. What he didn’t tell Mirari now was that John had, in fact, kept writing the blog. He had changed the settings on it so that every entry after his “final” message to his readers was private, readable only by him—and any number of intelligence agencies, of course. Through channels, Mycroft had arranged for Sherlock to have access, always. John’s blogging was less frequent now than it had been when he’d been primarily reporting on Sherlock’s cases, but it was much more personal. From a great distance, Sherlock had watched John grieving him; at times it had been almost unbearable, and Sherlock had demanded They let him go home. He’d threatened to leave on his own. He’d begged. They’d always persuaded him to stay, once even moving him from Vancouver to Auckland with a week-long stopover on a beach in Fiji, all while Sherlock, formerly raging at being held prisoner, floated along in a cloud of I-Don’t-Care he later figured was probably administered via grooming products, most likely his after-shave lotion.

Mirari, now scribbling away in her scrapbook, startled Sherlock back into the present with, “Doctor John Watson has a good mind. Like you have. And like you say I have.”

Sherlock took this in.

“Only, you and I see things that other people do not see, and Doctor John Watson sees things that other people do see. And many of the time, to solve these cases, you need both of those good minds.”

Sherlock sipped his coffee, nodded.

“You’re absolutely right,” he agreed.

Mirari threw her pen down, suddenly, violently, with a growl. “This pencil has no more ink inside!” She whined. She stood suddenly, making her chair wobble, flicking her fingers in her distress.

Sherlock reached for the inside pocket of his jacket, which of course he was not wearing because They only gave him hideous, pleated, khaki trousers and cheap, polyester-blend golf shirts that made Sherlock wonder if it wasn’t worth continuing the ruse and the safehouse residencies only so that he was sure not to turn up dead wearing them.

“No bother,” he said in as soothing a tone as he could manage. “There are other pens. I’ll get you one.”

“I like only this pencil because of every other one is too loud on the paper and hurts my ears!” Mirari protested, her face starting to contort, her eyes reddening, tears threatening. Sherlock grabbed the pen from the table—it was a cheap, disposable plastic thing he would never have used himself. But clearly it was important to Mirari to have this particular pen; she was melting down with alarming speed. “I have more to write before I can go home!” Mirari moaned, then wailed, “Why did this pencil break now?!”

Sherlock looked at his young friend, standing there flicking her fingers frantically, her eyes screwed shut as tears streamed out, her voice a thick whine, and he felt her dismay in his own gut.

“Sairlock,” she cried, “Why did this pencil break when I have more to write?”

“I’m going to get you another, just like this one. It won’t take me five minutes.” He strode to the closet, pulled a disposable mobile phone off the shelf, dialed the panic number, did not hit “Call.” With Mirari’s pen in a death grip, he set the phone down on the map in front of her. “I won’t be gone long,” he said.

“You are not meant to leave this flat,” she scolded, her eyes turned to the ceiling. She stamped her foot. “I know you are not meant to leave it. You told this to me many times.”

Sherlock tapped the table beside the phone with two fingers. “The phone is here. Nothing bad will happen. But if something bad were to happen--?”

“I know what I will do,” she said.

“Tell me.”

“Press ‘Call’ and take this phone to this closet and sit in this closet and do not say anything until I hear this word ‘watermelon,’ in English.”

Sherlock nodded. “I’ll get your pen. I’ll get you loads of them. Will you stop crying?”

Mirari pursed her lips so hard they turned white. She sat back down in her chair, but her fingers were still flicking against each other and she looked poised to spring.

Sherlock strode to the microwave, set the timer for ten minutes.

“I’ll be back before this timer goes. If I’m not, use the phone.”

Mirari made no response, but Sherlock assumed she understood. He slipped out the door of the flat—the first time he’d been in the hallway—and took a moment to get his bearings. He wasn’t even sure where the stairs were, or if there was a lift.

He found the stairwell, bounded down, waited behind the small glass window in the metal fire-door until the lobby was empty of people, slipped out the front door and across the street to the chemist’s. The pen was a common brand, and with a quick inquiry of the granny behind the checkstand, Sherlock found a package of ten, paid cash, and was about to leave when he noticed Mirari’s old pen had blue ink, while the new ones had black, so he went back and bought the others as well. The granny tried to convince him to change one for the other, but Sherlock was resolute: he’d take them all, and do keep the change, _Señora._

Once he’d crossed the street, he stopped on the pavement just long enough to draw a deep, leisurely breath—the air down here was different even than on the tiny balcony—and look up the road. There were construction vehicles parked, a yellow car with a red light on its roof, cones and signs and sawhorses blocking off part of the road, but no one working. In the other direction, across the street, the double-glass doors of Mirari’s grandmother’s cheese shop were open to the afternoon breeze. Sherlock ducked back into the building, through the fire door and up the stairs.

No one in the narrow hallway, the door of the flat opposite his—the only other flat on the floor—was closed, white, unadorned. He wondered if it was a safe house, too, then wondered why he hadn’t wondered this before. Fumbling the key from his trousers pocket, he unlocked his door and slipped inside. With a triumphant smile, he raised his handful of cheap, plastic pens in the air, about to announce, “Success!” but the familiar, metallic smell hit him a fraction of a second before he saw her.

Mirari was still seated in her chair at the round table, slumped forward, hands fastened behind her waist.

Sherlock’s knees were weak. He gagged.

Face down on the table, Mirari’s long brown hair hung limply onto the tabletop. Her scrapbook was still open but its pages, along with the elaborate map Sherlock had spent all morning drawing by hand, were ruined, soaked through with her still-warm blood.

 _What a waste_ , Sherlock thought.

The top of her skull, just above her ears, had been removed, probably with a machete or perhaps even a sword, and her brain sat in the upturned bowl of what had formerly been the crown of her head, carefully arranged so that Sherlock could see what her good mind—and her association with Sherlock Holmes—had cost her.

 _What a waste_ , he thought again.

Then, a jolt. _They will think I did this._

He wasn’t even sure who They were—his own handlers and fixers; Mirari’s grandmother; the local police; his brother—but in an instant Sherlock knew he was doomed. This wasn’t just a message. This was a set-up.

Sherlock took a few steps forward, looking around the table for the phone he’d left her. He looked toward the closet; the door was closed. As he bent to look beneath the table for the mobile, an explosion of pain at the back of his head, white light blinding him from inside his own eyes, strong hands encircling each of his limbs— _the worksite without workers, at this time of day, of course, he was so stupid_ \--the taste of leather mingled with his own blood as his mouth was slammed shut, the microwave timer shrieked— _balcony door slightly ajar, something bad happened, Mirari pressed “Call” and threw the phone out, They would know he was in trouble, she’d saved him_ —he was off his feet, they were taking him, a huge, hot nail drove into his upper arm, and then darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> "Adiskide" is a word in the Basque language of Northern Spain; it means, "a close friend."


End file.
